Mar. 23. 1850.] 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 
333 
thor of this work; for, after conjecturing that it 
might have come from William Tyndal, or George 
Jaye (alias Joy), or ‘som yong unlearned fole,” 
he determines “for lacke of hys other name to cal 
the writer mayster Masker,” a soubriquet which is 
preserved throughout his confutation. At the 
same time, it is clear, from the language of the 
treatise, that its author, though anonymous, be- 
lieved himself well known to his opponent : 
“I would haue hereto put mi name, good reader, 
but I know wel that thou regardest not who writteth, 
but what is writen; thou estemest the worde of the 
verite, and not of the authour. And as for M. More, 
whom the verite most offendeth, and doth but mocke it 
out when he can not sole it, he knoweth my name wel 
inough” (sub fin.). 
But here rises a grave difficulty, which I have 
taken the liberty of propounding to the readers of 
“ Nores anp Queriss.” Notwithstanding the 
above statements, both of the writer and of Sir 
Thomas More, as to the anonymous character of 
the treatise we are considering, the “Epistle to 
the Reader” is in my copy subscribed “ Robert 
Crowley,” naturally inducing the belief that the 
whole emanated from him. 
Perhaps this difficulty may be resolved on the 
supposition that, while the body of the Tract was 
first published without the “ Epistle to the Reader,” 
and More’s reply directed against it under this 
form, it might soon .afterwards have reached a 
second edition, to which the name of the author 
was appended. It is certain that More’s copy 
consisted of 32 leaves only (p. 1039, G.), which 
corresponds with that now before me, excluding 
the “ Epistle to the Reader.” Still, it is difficult 
to conceive that the paragraph in which the au- 
thor speaks of himself as anonymous should have 
remained uncancelled in a second edition, after he 
had drawn off what More calls “ his visour of dis- 
simulacion.” ‘There is, indeed, another supposition 
which would account for the discrepancy in ques- 
tion, viz. that the epistle and a fresh title-page 
were prefixed to some copies of the original edi- 
tion; but the pagination of the Tract seems to 
preclude this conjecture, for B. i. stands upon the 
third leaf from what must have been the com- 
mencement if we subtract the “Epistle to the 
Reader.” 
Wood does not appear to have perceived either 
this difficulty, or a second which this treatise is 
ealculated to excite. He places The Supper of the 
Lorde at the head of the numerous productions of 
Robert Crowley, as if its authorship was perfectly 
ascertained. But Crowley must have been a pre- 
eocious polemic if he wrote a theological treatise, 
like that answered by More, at least a year pre- 
viously to his entering the university. The date 
of his admission at Oxford was 1534; he was 
elected Fellow of Magdalene in 1542; he printed 
the first edition of Piers Plowman in 1550; and 
was still Parson of St. Giles’s, near Cripplegate, in 
1588, 7. e. fifty-five years after the publication of 
the Tract we are considering. (See Heylin’s Hist. 
of the Reformation, ii. 186., E. H. S. ed.) Were 
there two writers named Robert Crowley ? or was 
the Crowley a pupil or protégé of some early re- 
former, who caused his name to be affixed to a 
treatise for which he is not wholly responsible? I 
leave these queries for the elucidation of your 
bibliographical contributors. 
If I have not already exceeded the limits allow- 
able for such communications, I would also ask 
your readers to explain the allusion in the follow- 
Ing passage from Crowley’s tract :— - 
“ And know right well, that the more they steare thys 
sacramente the broder shal theyr lyes be spreade, the 
more shall theyr falsehoode appeare, and the more glori- 
ously shall the truthe triumph: as it is to se thys daye 
by longe contencion in thys same and other like arti- 
cles, which the papists haue so long abused, and howe 
more his lyes utter the truthe euery day more and more. 
For had he not come begynge for the clergy from pur- 
gatory, wyth his ‘supplicacion of soules,’ and Rastal 
and Rochester had they not so wyselye played theyr 
partes, purgatory paradventure had serued them yet ano- 
ther yere; neyther had it so sone haue bene quenched, 
por the poor soule and proctoure there ben wyth his 
bloudye byshoppe christen catte so farre coniured into his 
owne Utopia with a sachel about his necke to gather for the 
proude prystes in Synagoga papistica.” 
The Rastell here mentioned was doubtless he 
whom More (Works, p. 355.) calls his “ brother” 
(i.e. his sister's husband), joining him with Ro- 
chester (7.e. Bp. Fisher), as in this passage, on 
account of his great zeal in checking the progress 
of the earlier Reformation ; but what is the allu- 
sion in the phrase “with his bloudye bishoppe 
christen catte,” &c., lam unable to divine. Neither 
in the Supplicacion of Soules, nor in the reply to 
the ‘“nameles heretike,’ have I discovered the 
slightest clue to its meaning. C. H. 
St. Catherine’s Hall, Cambridge. 
[It would seem, from a Query from the Rev. Henry 
Walter, in No. 7. p. 109., on the subject of the name 
“ Christen Cat,” where the foregoing passage is quoted 
from Day’s edition of Tyndale’s Works, that this tract 
was by Tyndale, and not by Crowley.] 
WHAT IS A CHAPEL? 
What is the most approved derivation of the 
word Chapel ?— Capella, from the goat-skin co- 
vering of what was at first a movable tabernacle ? 
capa, a cape worn by capellanus, the chaplain? 
capsa, a chest for sacred relics? haba Eli (Heb.), 
the house of God? or what other and better 
etymon ? 
Ts it not invariably the purpose of a Chapel to 
supply the absence or incommodiousness of the 
parish church ? 
At what period of ecclesiastical history was the 
